


in a quiet kind of litany,

by carlemon



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-13 06:25:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12978015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carlemon/pseuds/carlemon
Summary: Vic Criss lives long enough to attend Derry High's senior formal. (Things go swimmingly.)





	in a quiet kind of litany,

**Author's Note:**

> _She was dancing, she was smiling_  
>  _Roses blooming in her cheeks_  
>  _In a quiet kind of litany_  
>  _She accepted some defeat_  
>  _And then she twirled into the arms_  
>  _Of disgrace, and then repelled_  
>  (...)  
>  _And then, she asked me how we got here_  
>  _I told her, "I don't know!"_  
>  _And if you keep on asking_  
>  _I'll just keep saying so_
> 
> Title from Madeon's Pay no Mind, which is, along with Saint Motel's Destroyer, my go-to for this ship tbh.

They’d truly gone all-out this year but that didn’t stop Vic from taking up a space (he’d pull up a chair ordinarily, but they’d all been taken, snatched by Peter and his lot) against the side of the gym wall. Derry High had got some disco-neon bullshit going on that gave him a headache to look at as he sucked on his teeth, newly-liberated from their braces, and brooded over the couples sucking face to the idle beats of Yes and Wham! and whatever bullshit the administration’d figured was popular with kids these days. Summer of motherfucking ‘92 and they still couldn’t spring for half-decent lights or even ventilation, and he sweated miserably in his rented tux, itching for a drink that wouldn’t nauseate him once done soothing his parched throat.

It’d been alright with Belch and the others, (Henry, Hockstetter; the latter’d wormed in out of nowhere, uninvited and unwanted. “You even got a date?” Henry’d snapped; Hockstetter had laughed, slid a lily-white claw over his shoulder, and rendered him taut, rigid for the rest of the ride. As it turned out, he was coming with Carla Bordeaux, but that didn't stop him from sidling up to them, no-it-fucking- _couldn't_. Vic could’ve offed himself right there and then as Belch cranked up the radio and did his level best to lift Henry’s mood, but he didn’t, because Amy had just been upholstered, and Vic was _not_ a total cocksucking prick) back outside, in the dim pleasant night with naught but the pinpricks at the end of their cigarettes to illuminate each other’s faces, but all of it was verging on unbearable now. The shitty acoustics, the strings of tinsel, the muddy streaks left by the boys’ loafers and the girls’ excruciating-looking heels on the lino. The muddled stench of perfume and punch and sweat, unmoving in the air. The shitty, rundown, inherent  _Derry_ -ness about it all.

Peter Gordon passed him on his way to Marcia, a smuggled beer in each hand. Smugly chipper as ever, he cried: “Brighten up, pal, jesus.” Vic made to trip him, a slow, exaggerated, movement that he leapt from, grinning. Peter had a real infectious grin, a sugared sunshine, _lucky-me_ grin as he slung an arm around Vic’s shoulder and rubbed it. He’d fallen out of Henry’s favour in about tenth grade, but not out of Belch or Victor's, and sometimes Vic missed just fucking around at the diamond instead of bitching over _whose_ car and _whose_ chick and who would be going to college, and who would have to bear the brunt of Henry’s now-perpetual bad mood next. “Lookit who’s here, huh? C’mon, give us a grin, Vic. Look a little alive, for my sake.”

 _For Pete’s sake._ Vic darted him a smile wryly amused and turned in the direction of his wild gestures to— something he didn’t mind much at all, in fact. Looking unimpressed by the gaudy decor, Greta Bowie _(Keene_ since about tenth grade he'd heard, though it was strange to think of her as apart from the Bowies) stood maleficent but resplendent in a shimmery sheath the precise muted cornflower hue of cotton candy, a purse embedded with rhinestones clutched into her unforgiving grip. In the wake of the staggering wave of drunks and their girlfriends she stood a cruel goddess, a paragon of the brutality the hockey girls got up to on-field with a plume of gold hair braided meticulously over her shoulder. She caught his eye and though he did not go to her, not immediately, he felt a smile twitch sleepily at his grim-set mouth.

Perhaps the night was salvageable after all. Henry slid up to him to hurl his cup of punch across the room, spilling it over the back of Cissy Clark’s date. When he whirled ‘round, scowling, they put on the faces of murder and of ravage at which they were more apt than anything else, and shot him the finger. “This is fuckin’ bullshit,” bemoaned Henry, his voice slurred. His open palm slid off Vic’s shoulder; Vic held him upright, sympathising wordlessly through his hard grip, his noisy expelled breath. “I’m fucking out of here, Vic. You coming?”

Vic eyed Greta from across the room. Henry followed his gaze, and grunted, half-approving, in response, like they were still _buddy-buddy_ enough for Vic to give even the semblance of a shit. “Nah, Hank. Think I’ll stay awhile.” A pause. “Saw Belch out for a smoke, man. Out back.” Belch had taken one look at the sorry state of things and promptly fucked off, date in tow; Vic almost direly wished he had too. Quietly, loyally, he prompted: _go, go, go._ Henry got the hint, clapped him hard on the back, and swaggered off.

In his absence, Vic caught a glimpse of himself in the windowpanes opposite the gym and began to fret, smoothing down his rumpled collar, out his crooked tie. He was in the process of rolling out the wrinkles in his slacks (he’d rolled them up slightly, for even now Vic was no stunner, no _fine young man,_ and they’d been just a tad too long) when above him he heard Greta’s strong, clear drawl of, “Look what the cat dragged in.”

Righting himself in an instant, he buried his hands into the pockets of his blazer. His disdainfully lackadaisical persona it seemed had left him along with his axe-murderer’s face, leaving behind something bashful, perhaps a little uncertain. (He’d even gelled his hair up, out of his face, and he looked alright, he supposed, but he was no stunner, no dashing specimen or Peter, and—) In greeting he nodded and as the Derry High chaperones (one of whom was none other but old Butch Bowers, and _jeezum_ they’d had a fucking spectacular time glowering wary at him as Henry bit his nails hard into his palms) rolled on some warped Springsteen he did his utmost best not to check Greta out too obviously.

 _Not_ checking her out was not an option. Her dress was exquisite, pinched and tucked in expertly as to give her a silhouette that only rivalled her up-close in allure. She’d forsaken the gloss she’d worn all through school for something dead-red, matte, and her lips parted in something equal parts winsome and ruinous as she looked him up and down with a blasé stare of her own, her gestures spanning him with her cup of punch. “You don’t clean up half-bad, do you, Criss?” Her red mouth stretched into a smile like a pomegranate, lush and jewelled, revealing keen teeth perfectly straight. (Was there— was there something there, or was he finally going as balls-off-the-walls batshit as Hank?) He mirrored it, making a lacklustre sweeping motion at her cup.

“It’s spiked,” he warned. “Think fucking Hockstetter got to it at the beginning of the night.” It was half past nine by now, and the effects were beginning to show: in the distance with Moose clawing at the tulle skirts of her gown to stay upright, Sally Mueller tottered about, giggling shrilly. It was without question pretty fucking hilarious, and she’d be mortified come morning which was, as far as Vic was concerned, all the better for a spectator as he. (He however hoped to _Christ_ , Bowers, _anybody_ , hoped for He to be good to him today because the year wasn’t quite done yet, and he didn’t want to be smelling jizzum compounded by the unbearable summer heat in his chem class for another good two weeks, lest he neck himself from the ceiling for real.)

“Spiked.” Greta’s lip twitched, as did his, in a grin. She looked him dead in the fucking eye and chugged her cup down in a single proud, unhesitating go.

Ho- _lee shit._ (Motherfucking christ, he was not imagining it.) Dark mirth seized him and then she was thrusting another cup at him, perfect teeth bared untamed in a wolfish grin. “Spiked? C’mon, Victor. Don’t give me that shit.”

He found it deserving of rapture, her ability to sound simultaneously so crass and so— girlish. Still, he could neither bother nor bear to pussy out, not during senior year, so he took it, and drank. From her vibrant grin escaped an approving whistle, stretching in the humid air. It pressed unbearable at his sticky collar and tie too-tight as he swallowed, finding himself doubly parched by the time he was scrunching up the little plastic cup in his hand and chucking it over his shoulder. “That was _shit.”_

“Have another, then, Criss.” _What’re you scared of?_ It hovered between them much too fond, glinting off the bejewelled hollow of her throat. Her corsage, wilted by oppressive heat, quivered in the breeze of students well on the way to stampeding across the gym floor, demanding something of him he was not sure how to give, not yet.

Vic sucked on his teeth, cocking a dark eyebrow. “Not on your life.” Still, she smiled at him; still, he smiled back, really wishing for that chair now. Outside he heard the familiar, brilliant pop-and- _CRACK_ of an M-80, followed by hoots of delighted, jeering laughter, and knew Belch and Henry must be living it up outside right now as he swayed, trapped. Funny, he had no desire to join them, even if the punch’s cloying sweetness was beginning to stick his tongue and teeth together. Funnier how Greta’s smile seemed to grow and grow closer with each moment that passed. He could appreciate the slow shift of its rosen curve, in and out of focus.

Hockstetter really had done a fucking number on the punch. Vic wasn’t sure to thank or hit him for it or _what_ , so settled for sparing him a brief nod as he brushed past with a lighter outlined against his flimsy shirtsleeve. (Goddamn fucking _lunatic_. Three years and the fucker hadn't changed, not a bit. Belch and Victor had grown as much as they could beneath the crushing yoke that was Derry in its entirety, but Henry, but godforsaken _Hockstetter_ , jeezum-cuh- _row_ —) “Henry’s outside.” He almost substituted it with a droll ' _your boyfriend, fuckface'_ but decided against it, (even now he was still unsure what Hank’s business with Hockstetter was, and wondered sometimes when he could bother to do so, but curiosity _had,_ after all, killed the cat) and Hockstetter smiled a slow and viscous smile that Vic imagined smearing he and Greta with slick tendrils as he sauntered out and vanished into the tepid, loathsome dark.

It was no great secret that neither Belch nor Victor would be greatly aggrieved if Hockstetter vanished entirely. “Fucking creep.” This was Greta. She said it before he’d disappeared entirely, and for second it looked like he might’ve heard her: he glanced back and met with oozy amusement (and the beginnings of a giggle) her and Vic’s combined disinterest and scorn. Even so, it seemed only that when he was assured to be gone did she relax. Vic sympathised deeply and his hand drifted forward, fluttering against her wilted corsage. She spared him a funny glance, brightening rapidly. “I can’t believe you hang out with that freak.”

“I _don’t.”_ Now, he was more insistent than ever to assert that Hockstetter was no fucking friend of Victor Criss', _no-sir,_ not on his life. Abruptly, the song changed to something real high and warbled and fruity. Really, it would’ve been a stupid fucking move for Vic to expect anything else, (summer of ‘92 and still all of Derry knew jack shit about kids and music) but he felt nonetheless his features crinkle and warp, (he could not wait to be rid of this shithole hovel-town) distorting his expression into one of boyish disdain (and smoke Dunhills out of Belch’s hand in fresh-aired, greener pastures) that Greta evidently found incredibly amusing because she snorted, and folded her arms across her chest.

“It’s not so bad.” Perhaps she meant the song, perhaps she meant the dance, perhaps she meant Derry, though he doubted it. The West Broadway girls were strange fruit, ordinarily not worth the trouble to croon and call at, but even their corner of paradise was an open sore with a bandaid over it at best. “You’re no good at pulling that uppity look, you know.”

He did not mean for it to, but still this tumbled out in a boozy rush: “Wouldja rather me or Hockstetter?” _(would you would you would you,_ greta, _who would you rather?)_ He was aware (but barely) of her arms coming undone and his hand drifting forth, and that hers was suddenly curled into his loose slim digits, grip neither smug nor unsure.

Greta grinned, a wondrous thing. “I think you know, Victor.” Neon glittered off her dress, off her colour-coordinated nails and jewels.

And he did. Her hands fit neatly into his, strong where he was nimble, spindly. Dimly, he corrected, “Vic.” He’d figured it was important, and it appeared to be, because her fingers squeezed briefly, sending into tremors the sprays of rose and baby’s breath bound ‘round her wrists in lavender ribbon. They stood there adrift as couples glanced off them, strides swayed by punch. He himself opened, dumbly, his mouth; tried to say something. (Christ mother _fuck_ - _Almighty_ , what had Hockstetter managed to do in the thirty fucking seconds they and Bordeaux'd left him unattended?)

Whatever it was was promptly stolen by another series of _pop-pop-pops._ Silver Salutes— Henry’s. Pop-pop-pop- _CRACK_ , muffled, as if against a car. Quick as a hare Peter severed himself from Marcia’s side and bolted for the door, hollering with a worried note in his voice: “Henry, _je_ -sus, _I fucking swear!_ ”

The door slammed behind him, and in the pregnant stretch of silence that followed, Vic and Greta regarded each other placidly. As it grew and budded, (an awkward bloom like no fucking other) he became acutely aware of the catastrophe in motion (”IswearIswear _Iswear!_ ” “Come off it, you little fucking jerk,”) heard in brief flashes through the door ajar, the rhythmic sighing and grinding of table legs against the floor two classrooms away (surely not his fucking chem lab, _surely fucking not),_ Greta’s coquette’s smile. Something about his semi-weary, aggrieved expression must’ve struck a chord within her because she erupted laughing, sending the puffs of baby’s breath around her wrists into a bobbing frenzy. He smiled helplessly along, and when her laughter cleared he was putty as she gazed up at him, lit from within in the tacky neon.

She flicked her braid over her shoulder with a powerful, enthralling motion, and demanded: “You gonna ask me to dance, or what?”

(He owed her that, at least.) And so he did and they danced, even though Vic could not dance for shit. And so they danced, and she spared him scarcely a break through it all, snatching from him the smokes he attempted to light up in between verses (slapping them from his hands, in fact) and insisting he stay on the dancefloor when the unrecognisable song’s unbearable crescendo and overdone guitar riffs gave way to a consecutive four of her favourites. And so they danced, until she kissed him with her arms around his neck and his palms slipping off the periwinkle silk of her gown, failing to find purchase.

It was such a brief, chaste thing, smelling overpoweringly of vanilla in lieu of the cherry-gloss she’d donned all through school, and it ended far too quickly with her cheek pressed against his chest as she smiled appraising at him, into him, but it damn near made his entire fucking senior year. She told him, “You’re not so bad, Vic,” and when he muttered, “Well I fucking _hope_ so,” he must’ve said it suitably endearingly because she _laughed_ with her teeth biting into her lush full pout and her spray of wilted white rose at his cheek, and maybe Derry High had gotten the right idea after all.

They navigated the gym like that in long, lax, arcs, wrapped up together. More than once they caught the scrutinising eye of Marcia; she only smiled, a leery little thing, but Greta darted her scowls and cut-throat motions in between songs nonetheless, too West-Broadway to flip the bird. Vic, drunken on her vanilla-smell (was it perfume, or her lipstick? He could not tell, and would not be able to tell, if not for another—) could scarcely give a shit but drew her into him closer and closer each time Marcia passed ‘til Greta parted them with a cynical eyebrow cocked, and creases in her otherwise unblemished skirt. “You don’t have to hold me so tight, Vic. I’m not going to fucking run away, you know.”

He huffed mildly, sardonically. “Just making sure.” She smiled at that and the way he said it, the just made into a drawling _jes,_ and they spun ‘round and ‘round ‘til her deft hands snuck from his shoulders to his jaw, to his cheeks, and etched there something like a smile contented and true.

It was on their second circle of the gym floor that the song finally changed to something he recognised. In his bones, the low loping tunes of Sonic Youth thrummed familiar, comforting, but Greta went rigid against him, and when she separated them, it was hard intent lining her made-up features. A leg wrought strong by field-hockey and the truly erroneous sportsmanship that took place therein twitched against his idled palm. He cocked his head, curious, to look at her. “We have to get into the middle for this.”

“It’s not a dancing song.” And it wasn’t— _Superstar_ , he figured, that was it. Sonic Youth and their Superstar was no fucking dancer’s anthem— it was half the damn reason he’d been so fond of them way back in ‘89. Unamused by his dim wry dissent, she curled around him tight and began to steer them into the centre of the floor. Vic trailed along helplessly in her unforgiving current, buffeted by the undertows of drunk students and their dates doing precisely that as well. When Gard Jagermeyer brushed too close, Vic lashed out lazy with a leg and caught him with a kick, receiving for his troubles a scowl and then a noxious, squirmy grin when he caught eye of Greta. Apparently, they were to dance to this— apparently, that was what was going to happen, and Vic Criss did not have a single fucking say in the matter at all.

His hands found Greta’s waist, and he flicked his hair out of his eyes with a toss of the head, fingers looped into the closest he or anyone would ever come to spun gold: a shimmery trail down her back. “This isn't a fucking dancing song,” he repeated, or made to repeat, because suddenly her capable hands were bracing his jaw soft as featherdown and their faces were brought together, her mouth ghosted close and grinning over his, and all the protest died in him. “—Can’t dance to this,” was its seethed mumbling substitute, “ _I_ can’t.”

Greta’s hands found his again, smoothing away the strange itchy fuzzies in his palms. (Maybe he _should_ be thanking Hockstetter; maybe he would, when he and the others were done slinging Silver Salutes and little-kid cherry-bombs at each other out there in the lonesome dark.) Her mouth spoke into his sticky chest a beseeching paean, and a snort. “God, just shut up, Vic.”

And he did.

(Superstar was, indeed, turning out to be a fucking dancing song.)


End file.
